The result of Clavel's reflections was that he came to the conclusion that marriage with a young woman who "had nothing and owed a great deal" might prove but an indifferent bargain for an ambitious young actor; and Adrienne, after a somewhat lengthy period of solitude, accepted the protection of Comte François de Klinglin, son of the préteur royal, or first magistrate, of Strasburg. To him, at the beginning of the year 1717, she bore a second daughter, Catherine Françoise Ursule; but the ill-fortune which had attended her previous liaisons still pursued her, for, almost immediately after this event, her lover abandoned her, in order to contract a wealthy marriage, to which he had been long urged by his family.
The marriage of the father of her child threw poor Adrienne into the depths of despair. Too proud to reproach him with his perfidy, and yet too sensitive to remain to witness its consummation, she determined to leave the city, which must henceforth have for her such painful associations, and, having obtained permission to make her début at the Comédie-Française, at the close of the theatrical year, she set out for Paris. Her two children she left at Strasburg, where she had them educated with great care, and on her death, in 1730, made ample provision for them. The elder, daughter of Philippe Le Roy, afterwards married the musician Francœur the younger, who, in 1757, was appointed director of the Opera; the younger, daughter of the faithless Klinglin, became the wife of a M. Daudet (or Dauvet), a magistrate at Strasburg.
It was on May 14, 1717, that Adrienne made her first appearance before the Parisian public, in the title-part in the Électre of Crébillon, and as Angélique in George Dandin—that is to say, in both tragedy and comedy. Notwithstanding the fact that the Czar, Peter the Great, then on a visit to Paris, was to be present at the Opera that evening, the house was crowded, for the débutante had brought a great reputation with her from the provinces, while not a few playgoers remembered her performances when a child at Madame du Gué's and in the Temple. The expectations of the public were not disappointed. "Her success was so prodigious," writes d'Allainval, "that it was remarked that she had begun as great actresses usually finish"; and a perfect storm of enthusiasm followed the fall of the curtain.
Nor did the heroine of the evening fail to confirm the advantage she had gained. A few days later, she gave a masterly rendering of the rôle of Monime in Racine's Mithridate, which will be remembered as one of Mlle. de Champmeslé's most brilliant creations, speedily followed by other triumphs as Bérénice, Irené in Andronic, Alcmène in Amphitryon, and Pauline in Polyeucte; and, on June 20, a vacancy having in the meanwhile arisen, she was received into the company and allotted a demi-part.
For thirteen years, that is to say until her death, on March 20, 1730, Adrienne reigned the almost unquestioned queen of the Comédie-Française, passing from triumph to triumph, associating her name with a great variety of characters in tragedy, and attaining a popularity with the playgoing public such as no actress had ever before enjoyed. "A lofty soul, great enthusiasm, constant study, a passionate love for her art," says Sainte-Beuve, "all combined to make of her that ideal of a great tragédienne, which until that time does not appear to have been realised to this degree. Mlle. Duclos was only a representative of the declamatory school, and if Mlle. Desmares and the Champmeslé had had great and splendid parts, they certainly never attained to the all-round perfection of Adrienne Lecouvreur. When the latter appeared, she had no other model than her own taste, and she created."[68]
As the French theatre had been founded in imitation of the ancients, without much regard for the difference of manners, in the same way, its dramatic declamation was ruled by obscure traditions, independently of the difference in languages. When at the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, the art had hardly freed itself from its first awkwardness, some erroneous ideas of the elocution of the Greeks and the stage system of the Romans made of the actor's delivery a kind of measured chant. Favoured by the construction of the verses of the great seventeenth century dramatists and the brilliant successes of Mlle. de Champmeslé, this monotonous chant passed from the Rue Mauconseil to the Comédie-Française, where, at the time of Adrienne's appearance, it had become so firmly established that to the great majority of the company and a large number of their patrons any revolt against its sway seemed something like sacrilege. So long as Baron had remained on the stage some check had been imposed on this deplorable custom, for Baron, educated in the school of Molière, a strenuous advocate of naturalness, had remained faithful to the traditions of the Palais-Royal. But his abrupt retirement, in 1696, in the flower of his age, left the adherents of the rival school in undisputed possession of the field, and for more than twenty years nothing occurred to interfere with the reign of inflated declamation, which was carried by the successors of Mlle. de Champmeslé to lengths which provoked the ridicule and disgust of foreign visitors.[69]
Adrienne's phenomenal success was, in a great measure, due to the fact that she had the courage and good sense to break with the old traditions of the theatre, and abandon this stilted and artificial style of elocution for simpler and more natural modes of speech. "The charming Lecouvreur," wrote the Italian actor Riccoboni, the jeune premier of the Comédie-Italienne, in his didactic poem, Dell' arte rappresentativa, "is the only one who does not follow the road along which all her comrades run at full speed. If she happens to weep or complain without terrifying us, as the others do by their bawlings, she touches the heart so profoundly, that we become affected with her."[70]
This natural style of delivery seems to have been originally imposed upon Adrienne by her physique, which was more delicate than vigorous. Her voice, though singularly pleasing, was not remarkable for extent and power, like Mlle. de Champmeslé's, but she used it with such consummate skill as to vary its modulations according to the sentiments she desired to express. "Although her voice is very weak," says the author of the Lettres historiques, "she pleased the public at first, and continues to please it; because it finds in her a novel style, natural and the more agreeable, in that she has studied how to control it and to proportion it to her strength; and thus one might say that the weakness of her chest has contributed to this kind of perfection." The Mercure, of March 1730, confirms the anonymous writer: "She had not many tones in her voice, but she knew how to lend to them infinite variety." Moreover, she seems to have possessed the rare gift of clearness of pronunciation, "the orthography of the actor's art," and seldom indeed had so pure and distinct a delivery been heard upon the stage.
For this last qualification Adrienne was indebted to the counsels of César du Marsais, the grammarian-philosopher, as, when she first appeared on the stage of the Comédie-Française, her pronunciation was far from perfect; she understood the true meaning of the words of her parts, but delivered them in a way which considerably discounted their value, and thus, according to Régnier, touched the hearts, and irritated the ears of the more fastidious critics at one and the same time. D'Allainval relates that on the evening of her début, while the theatre was ringing with the applause of the delighted audience, an elderly man, seated at the back of a box, refrained from joining in the general enthusiasm, and contented himself with remarking from time to time, in a low tone, "Bon, cela!" His behaviour was much commented upon by those who sat near him, and duly reported to Adrienne, who, on learning that it was Du Marsais, became curious to learn the reason of the qualified approval of one who appeared to be a critic of some discernment, and accordingly sent him a very courteous note inviting him to dine with her tête-à-tête.
Du Marsais came, but, before sitting down to table, he begged the actress to do him the favour of reciting a tirade from one of her favourite rôles. Adrienne readily consented, but was not a little surprised at only obtaining for her trouble an occasional "Bon, cela." Mortified by her guest's comparative indifference to her talents, she inquired in what she had failed to please him. "Mademoiselle," replied Du Marsais, "so far as my judgment goes, no actress has ever given promise of greater talents than yours, and, in order to eclipse probably all your predecessors, I will venture to promise that all that is required on your part is to give to each word the exact emphasis necessary to express its meaning."